Evaluation of road traffic crashes among admittances to 112 emergency healthcare services in Samsun 2004

Abstract

Objectives: More than 1.2 million people are killed each year, and 50 millions more are injured or disabled as a result of road traffic crashes. This study aimed to determine the demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients admitted to 112 emergency healthcare services (EHS) with road traffic crashes in Samsun city in 2004.
Materials and Methods: In this descriptive study, records of EHS department directorate of Samsun Health Directorate between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2004 were surveyed retrospectively. Ages and gender of patients, time of the event, season of the event, time of the arrival, outcome of the event were obtained from records. Because of some of the gender data were absent in these records, 993 data were examine in this study.
Results: In the year 2004, 9015 calls were made to EHS. In all, 1370 patients were road traffic crashes; this group accounted for 15.2% of all calls. The median age of this group was 35 (1-86) years (65.6% male, 34.4% female). Of the cases, 447 (32.6%), 359 (26.2%), 298 (21.8%) and 266 (19.4%) were occured in autumm, summer, winter and spring, respectively. Most of the accidents (42.8%) occured between 4: 00 p.m. and 11: 59 p.m. during the days. The median time of the arrival was 5.0 (1.0-53.0) minutes. While 62.7% of patients were transported to the hospital, and 13.7% of patients were treated locally. 13.2% of them were transported by another vehicle until the ambulance arrival. The number ofdeaths until the ambulance arrival was 47 (3.4%) and 25 (1.8%) of the calls were unfounded.
Conclusion: The high number of transportation with other vehicles out of ambulance and unfounded calls thought that there’s need training programs about first aid in the community.